This is a good example of the Islam religion doing its thing. There can be no actual peace with Islam until they have superiority over everyone. That is why Israel and the USA are the prime targets of Islam today. building up military forces to be their targets into the Afghan terrain pretending that we can pacify that place is insanity.

Far greater strangeness has since flowed steadily from Washington. The president's appointees, transmitters of policy, go forth with singular passion week after week, delivering the latest inversion of reality. Their work is not easy, focused as it is on a current prime preoccupation of this White House—that is, finding ways to avoid any public mention of the indisputable Islamist identity of the enemy at war with us. No small trick that, but their efforts go forward in public spectacles matchless in their absurdity—unnerving in what they confirm about our current guardians of law and national security.

Then there are the forty Afghans slaughtered at a wedding party but you won't see a peep from Robert Cook about that only to somehow twist logic and astrophysics on its head to somehow lay the blame at our feet.

Put it in context, Triangle May says, the sarcasm a bit too thick and the target a bit too obvious. But OK.

This post reminded me of a scene in Elie Wiesel's Night Triology, describing his ordeal in the Nazi camps. One of the many horrifying images he describes was of a young child being hanged on a gallows. The child was so small and his weight was too slight that the noose cound not do its work with any efficiency. I read the book years ago, but it is an image that is hard to forget. Wiesel offers the story as part of his chronicle of hell on earth, his version of the Inferno that, unfortunately, wasn't just a product of poetic imagination.

I don't know of any other context into which this report of the hanging of a 7-year old for spying could possibly be put.

In no article I have seen does the child's name appear. I realize that's insignificant given his death and how he died, but still, this really bothers me. It underscores, doesn't it, the attitude that he was merely a symbol, a tool, to be used, and his humanity and youth be damned. Other articles report that he was related to a local tribal elder:

A resident of the Sangin District told Central Asia Online by phone, “The child was the grandson of a local elder; tribal elders, particularly those who support the government or the reconstruction programmes, often get killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan”.

Militants regularly kill students, teachers, women, and farmers on charges of spying for the government. Local residents claim foreign militants are involved in most of these brutal acts. Local officials say the militants do so to instill fear and terrorise the population.

@Richard, I was thinking the same thing. As obscene as executing a 7 year old boy is to begin with, the thought that his body weight wouldn't be enough to snap his neck and consequently he'd slowly strangle to death over twenty or thirty minutes has to set a new low, even for Islam.

I do think at some point the rest of the civilized world needs to come to grips that these 'militants' are largely inspired to commit these barbaric acts due to thier religion. I'm sorry folks but all you have to do is look at the countries whith the predominant religion where women are subjugated into second class citizens, gays executed and murder is the answer over cartoons.

While a 'final solution' is obviously not the answer I think its high time that the West stop mollycollding this religion as if it remotely resembles the fiction that the West wants it to be.

"Then there are the forty Afghans slaughtered at a wedding party but you won't see a peep from Robert Cook about that only to somehow twist logic and astrophysics on its head to somehow lay the blame at our feet."

6/10/10 10:40 AM

Why would you presume incorrectly that I would lay blame at America's feet for murders committed by the Taliban? They are responsible for their own murders, just as we are responsible for our murders of members of wedding parties and other innocents we have committed via drone bomb strikes and panicked or over-eager troops shooting up homes they have burst into.

Why would you presume incorrectly that I would lay blame at America's feet for murders committed by the Taliban?

Consistency?

They are responsible for their own murders, just as we are responsible for our murders of members of wedding parties and other innocents we have committed via drone bomb strikes and panicked or over-eager troops shooting up homes they have burst into.

Cookie being true to form since that requires a presumption of guilt on our military forces in that they are deliberately targeting innocents.

And Cook, I'm not going to get into a debate with you over the use of force in fighting terrorism. You have consistently stated that even Afghanistan is an unjustified war despite it being the training ground and sanctuary of the 9/11 terrorists who murdered 3000 Americans in cold blood. So save your keyboard and we can agree to disagree. ;-)

"Cookie being true to form since that requires a presumption of guilt on our military forces in that they are deliberately targeting innocents."

How about simply being reckless, careless, callous, and unprofessional? When we have as the results of such failings the repeated killings of noncombatant civilians (in a land where we have no legitimate or even believable purported objectives or purpose), that's murder. Especially where the default military stance on such instances is denial, then, begrudgingly, apologies and "regrets" when the denials are refuted. When an accident is followed by attempted cover-up, the crime is compounded.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/world/asia/05afghan.html

We're not in Afghanistan because it was "the training ground and sanctuary of the 9/11 terrorists." (Heck, 9/11 was planned in various places all over the world, including in America.) We're there because of the strategic advantages it offers in our quest to impose American control over middle eastern oil reserves, (including its proximity to Iran, which is sandwiched between Afghanistan and Iraq...handy, eh?).

GMay said...Aren't these the people we're supposed to be engaging according to the most enlightened and smartest President EVAR?

Given the corruption of the US puppet, Karzai, and his regime Pashtuns have seen the Taliban come back and control most of the population of 24 million Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

With the US in serious decline, and broke, staying in expensive, eternal warfare in distant tribal lands should be seriously questioned each month as strategically viable or not.

The rationale, expressed by Bush II, was that we could just go their to "stop evildoers from coming here by fighting them over there with our high tech superhero soldiers, then spread the blessings of Western values civilization and democracy". And "do it in a quick, easy war".

Most of that rationale has broken down.No values, no Democracy imparted. Fighters have adapted and now have the US pissing away soldier's lives and treasure (to the tune of 50 billion a year) in a war THAT LAST WEEK OFFICIALLY BECAME OUR LONGEST WAR EVER.

Unfortunately, on top of Bush's bumblings and misreads, Democrats were so bullshit over Iraq that they agitated for defeat and humbling the US there by CYA-ing their patriotism by urging more troops and money go to the Real War, the Good War to "find bin Laden" and give him his ACLU legal defense team...so we can "bring him to justice". (A rationale stupider than Bush's).

Bottom line, Pashtuns will be barbarians in 2011 and 2100 for that matter, no many how lives we squander of 100s of billions we spend there building Burger Kings and such for our "fighting heroes". They will hang kids, beat women in Burquas, kill non-PAshtuns, and Pashtuns that violate some honor rule...because that is what they have done for 2,000 years.

So whether the barbarians grow heroin, kill little snitches, expect women to shut up and cook the vittles is not something that dictates an obligatory American war to "improve things" and make the world safer for little snitches...

The only real. military valid reasons for us to be there is the (1)Arab evildoer issue and the idea that (2)we need to be there to "stabilize Pakistan". (difficult because if we ever needed to go into Pakistan from Afghanistan, it would be by forces 95% dependent on logistic support coming through Pakistan)

1. There are about 8 other unstable Islamoid nations that "evildoers" have safe haven in - and we are not talking about invading, spending trillions more, on wars with Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, etc. So the rationale that we "have to be there in permanent war in Afghanistan to fight to prevent an attack on America" is weak. Supposedly, we deter others by saying you mess with us, we will bomb the snot out of you as we did in Afghanistan in 2001..

2. We ARE a cause of instability in Pakistan, among other causes, not a cure.

3. The Democrat's claim we need an endless war to find one man is even stupider than the neocon's giggerish.

4. The idea we are morally obligated to, alone of nations, invade nations that do not uphold EuroLeft and US Left/progressive Jewish lawyer "Human Rights law" is ridiculous. Especially given the EuroLeft's reluctance to do more than talk human rights, not enforce their ideas of what human rights are with any action. The EuroLeft has succeeded in 15-30% planned further European military cuts in tough financial times to keep social services afloat. And troops in Iraq honestly answer Iraqis charging they are "Jew-Crusaders" by saying not only are they not Crusaders, but haven't served or met any Leftist/ progressive Jew in frontline military duty in their 3 or so years of service.

5. Number of terrorists captured by Leftist/progressive Jews in law or military service? Likely zero. Number of terrorists that are said to have sacred Constitutional rights who may have been criminally harmed by "evil Bushies" by Leftist/progressive Jewish forces? Near 100%.

Cedarford, I'm sure that you're right, such barbarities have been going on for a very long time.

But if we've lost 4,000 men, then I'd wager that we've killed at least 30 times that number, 99.9% of them in bad need of killing.

And that's about 120,000 dead assholes that won't hang a seven-year-old boy (what you refer to as a "little snitch") tomorrow. I'd call that an accomplishment.

(Of course, you probably consider this accomplishment overshadowed by the fact that this all plays into the hands of the International Jewish Conspiracy.)

I'm just sorry that our military didn't kill a few more over there. Specifically, I'd love to see them kill every single son-of-a-bitch in this lynch mob. And before you start with the "killing doesn't accomplish anything, there will just be more killers to replace those" isolationist/hippy/antisemite pastiche which is uniquely Cedarford, allow me to say:

Bullshit.

When was the last time that a kraut shot a Jewish woman in the back of the head and dumped her in a lime pit, Cedarford?

About 65 years. You know why? Because we killed every such murderous kraut.

"What the eff do you know about unprofessional or panic stricken soldiers? Have you ever spent any time with members of the military? You would be disabused of your niavite quite quickly."

Heck, I was giving them at least one somewhat understandable, if not excusable, out. If they're so steadfast that they're not panicked--and if you assert they are not unprofessional--in other words, not reckless or overeager--the only remaining reason we're killing so many innocents must be because we intend to do so.

Mr. Penry is to die for the 1979 rape and murder of Pamela Mosley Carpenter, 22, who was decorating her new home at the time he forced his way in and attacked her. Mr. Penry was on parole after serving 2 years for an earlier rape. Mrs. Carpenter was the daughter of prominent family in Livingston and sang in the choir at her church.

Valerian's story is about a convicted rapist, who was convicted in 1980 for a murder he committed in 1979 and sentenced to death. He appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, who in 1989 ordered a new trial where he was again convicted of murder and sentenced to death. He appealed his new trial sentence and in 2001 the Supreme Court threw it out, after which a trial court sentenced the convicted rapist-murderer to death a third time. In 2005, that third sentence was overturned, and he was finally sentenced to life imprisonment. (additional information here.)

The story Althouse posted is about a 7-year old boy who was put on trial for spying which resulted in his near-immediate conviction and execution by hanging.

When was the last time that a kraut shot a Jewish woman in the back of the head and dumped her in a lime pit, Cedarford?

About 65 years. You know why? Because we killed every such murderous kraut.

We're just not done yet in Afghanistan..."

================1. WWII was not fought for America to serve the Jews. That we happened to kill some Nazis that killed Jews is a fortunate byproduct of why we actually fought that war for them.That no communist Jew that shot Ukrainians, Cossacks, Latvians, Poles and Russians in the back of the head and dumped them in limepits or just worked them to death in Gulags was ever "brought to justice" - is unfortunate. But not worth war with the Soviets over.

2. If we are now in Afghanistan longer than we were in Vietnam simply to kill SOBs...

a. How long should we stay if barbaric Pashtuns don't mend their ways? 30 years? Less? b. And how many trillions do you want to borrow from China to fund your excellent little adventure to kill "bad guys" generally no threat to America and convince ignorant barbarian women to shed their Burques?c. If neo-con sabre rattling feels so good, when will Pastafarians new wars of adventure start? To bring the blessings of the WEst to resentful people, and save the noble Somalis, Yemenis, Iranians, Sudanese, Pakistanis, Iranians, Eritreans, etc. from themselves?With two endless wars in progress, what is your selection for the 3rd endless war you wish to start?

d. Define "we are just not done yet"?

e. For that matter, define "we" - as I am not aware of a single neocon, let alone conservative - that has run on a "great new wars we need to start" platform...or argued that if they were elected that Iraq and Afghanistan would go on years, decades more..."until the job is done".

f. BTW, thats just a few of the Muslim countries with "bad guys we should kill and accept being killed by as we bring the US into further debt and decline". What about the wars you want with "bad human rights violators" in Asia and Africa?? When does your N Korea war start, Pastafarian? Or your Congo, S Philippines, Burma Wars??

3. Even if anyone swallows your conceit that WWII was "all about saving the Jews" - did victory really save them? Block further Jew-killing? Or did WWII just temper the thirst for bloodshed of any kind in Europe from Spain to the Soviet Union? Even in Stalin's Soviet Union, Jews and Russians under him greatly abated their liquidation programs after 1947 or so after they eliminated class enemies in E Europe.

AC245 said... "From Valerian's link: 'Mr. Penry is to die for the 1979 rape and murder of Pamela Mosley Carpenter, 22, who was decorating her new home at the time he forced his way in and attacked her. Mr. Penry was on parole after serving 2 years for an earlier rape. Mrs. Carpenter was the daughter of prominent family in Livingston and sang in the choir at her church. ' Valerian's story is about a convicted rapist, who was convicted in 1980 for a murder he committed in 1979 and sentenced to death. He appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, who in 1989 ordered a new trial where he was again convicted of murder and sentenced to death. He appealed his new trial sentence and in 2001 the Supreme Court threw it out, after which a trial court sentenced the convicted rapist-murderer to death a third time. In 2005, that third sentence was overturned, and he was finally sentenced to life imprisonment. (additional information here.)"

Not only was it already well-established that it's unconstitutional to give the death penalty for rape, it's also now well-established that it's unconstitutional to give the death penalty even for a brutal torture murder if it was committed before the killer turned 18.

Valerian's profile identifies him as a practicing criminal lawyer in Madison, Wisconsin. What's going on there?!

I actually agree with TRO's take, this is a classic old school brutality mentality (the Mafia did not think these tactics up and even they generally do not target "civilian" family members who are seven). It needs to be resisted and never tollerated.

Well, I was looking for condemnation against this level of sub-human barbarity from AL, HDHouse, and Garage McDouche, but I guess they are all at a party patting each other on the back on how much they hate the Jews.

You sort of dodged my question there, and bombarded me with a dozen questions. My question was: Didn't the killing of the right Germans during WWII accomplish something positive, since the Germans haven't invaded their neighbors or liquidated their ethnic minorities in 65 years?

And so, by extension, might the killing of the Taliban be worth some investment in American lives and money?

The closest you came to an answer was: "Or did WWII just temper the thirst for bloodshed of any kind in Europe from Spain to the Soviet Union?"

(You were disproving my non-thesis that WWII was fought on behalf of the International Jewish Conspiracy, and was "all about the Jews".)

But yes, C4, you're right -- it did temper their thirst for bloodshed, because we killed just about every European with such a thirst. That's my whole point.

And President Pastafarian's next war of conquest: Iran. We start the bombing next week.

We'll pound the shit out of Afghanistan and Iran, and allow the moderates there a chance at self-government (just as we did in Iraq, and just as we did in Japan and Germany -- and pretty fucking effectively, I might add). And then we'll move on to North Korea.

I read a very good essay the other day detailing how many millions of people have died at the hands of peace movements and isolationists. They delayed our entry into WWII, they caused us to nut our military in the 30s and we were underprepared, and almost lost. Had it not been for appeasers in Great Britain, Hitler would have been snuffed out before he ever gained momentum.

And consider this: Look at the relationships that we now have with Germany and Japan. A big component of that is mutual respect, and respect isn't earned by hiding your head in the sand. The young Americans we're sending over there are some of the best representatives of our culture that we could have chosen, particularly if we're trying to influence a warrior culture like Afghanistan's. And despite what Robert Cook says, they've fought over there with one hand tied behind their back in an effort to avoid noncombatant casualties at all costs and at great risk to themselves. And there have been fewer massacres and rapes by Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan than in any other comparable recent engagement. And the Afghans see that.

And as for having the money to pay for President Pastafarian's imperialist adventures: We'll have plenty of money, once we slash every non-military component of the budget. Robert Cook will have to actually go out and get a job when his food stamps stop showing up in the mail, and the economy will take off like a rocket, receipts will shoot up even with lower nominal rates, and money won't be an issue.

Vote Pastafarian 2012.

(This message paid for by the Althouse blog, which in no way implies endorsement of Pastafarian for President 2012 on the part of Althouse, her commenters, or her representatives).

Another late entry, likely to be read at this date by few or none, with a link to today's COUNTERPUNCH, and to an article on the folly and waste of our misbegotten wars abroad:

http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad06112010.html

By the way, we didn't kill a "few right Germans" in WWII just to make an example of them and to deter future warmaking by by them; we went to war because Germany had declared war on America, and in its march to conquer Europe and Russia, it threatened the security and stability of the world. If there has been any existential crisis in our modern history that justified our going to war, that was it, the one and only time.

To the contrary, we started the wars we're presently stuck in, and which may bring about or contribute to the collapse of American society as we have known it.

In the global scheme of things, the murder of 3000 Americans, horrendous as it was, is a small crime. We have certainly imprisoned, tortured, and killed many more innocents than that in countries around the world both present and past. In Iraq alone we have rendered millions into homeless refugees. Our response to the crime of 9/11 was disproportionate, criminal, and not even really responsive; we used 9/11 as an excuse to further our pre-existing objectives in the middle east.

As you yourself snarkily acknowledge, Al Qaeda is not a nation-state; they're not Afghanistan and they're not Iraq, and our spreading our terror wars around to more and more countries to "fight terror" is stupid, pointless, oxymoronic, destructive, and a lie.

Robert Cook said: "...the murder of 3000 Americans... is a small crime."

Well, that perspective is certainly....interesting.

I'm not sure if it's ethical for me to continue this conversation. It's entirely possible that you're mentally disabled, or clinically insane, and if either is in fact the case, I apologize for continuing this public humiliation.

But let's give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you're merely an asshole, so bent upon winning an internet argument that you'll make any absurd assertion or offensive statement that might win you a point.

As an aside: You remember the video of the woman who chose to jump from the tower, rather than burn, who held her skirt down as she fell, trying to preserve one last shred of dignity as she died? I wonder if she agreed with you, that 9/11, "in the global scheme of things", was "a small crime".

Fuckhead.

You know, I'd go on, with arguments about how "war is not the answer" isolationists like you have caused more wars and more death than any single despot you've unintentionally propped up with your weak-kneed appeasement; but I'd rather just call you names.

You fuck-ninny.

As the Finnish would say, "Piss into a transformer." Or better yet, from the tradition of old Mexico (home of some of the most profane profanities ever uttered):

Chupe mantequilla de mi culo.

(Suck butter from my ass).

I would have used "me cago en tus muertos", but you've already done that, haven't you?

Given your high moral dudgeon over my remarks about the 3000 killed on 9/11--a high dudgeon supported only by your choosing to misinterpret my meaning--do you hold equally high moral horror at the tens (or possibly hundreds) of thousands of combined Iraqi and Afghanistan non-combatants whom we have killed or have caused to die by our baseless invasions of their countries? Do you feel equal moral horror at our normalizing torture as a "legitimate" (sic) technique? Do you feel equal moral horror at our practice of kidnapping or buying for ransom countless numbers of persons around the globe and clapping them into indefinite imprisonment in secret places, there to languish or die in secret? Do you feel equal moral horror at our destruction of the physical infrastructure of Iraq, rendering a formerly well-built up nation into (in many places) a wasteland with sporadic electrical power, despoiled water, radioactive waste (from depleted uranium shells), which, as with Agent Orange in Viet Nam, is the gift that keeps on giving with births of still-born or horribly deformed babies?

That you choose not to consider my remarks as intended but to launch a cascade of childish invective shows you have no real point of view other than "America--Fuck YEAH!"

There are crimes and crimes. The murder or torture or unjust imprisonment of any person is a terrible crime and cause for moral outrage. However, the inflated sense of injury many Americans hold regarding 9/11, such that they deem it our right and responsibility to embark on a global rampage of violence and destruction, is borne of our narcissim. We have inflicted injury without a thought against people around the world, but when a gang of stateless fanatic thugs succeeds in committing mass murder against us, we react as if the greatest offense in modern history has been done.

There were appropriate responses that we could have marshalled to 9/11, but we did not pursue them. Instead, we chose to pursue our own geopolitical agenda, using the murder of Americans as a cover for that which was already in the planning.

Now, years later, we've squandered not merely the lives of the Americans and Afghanis and Iraqis (and others) who have died needlessly, but we have squandered our treasure, and we bought with all that blood and treasure nothing, not even the apprehension of those who actually committed the crime of 9/11.

In the movies, Dirty Harry may be a satisfying fantasy figure; in real life, he's a psychopath as terrifing as those to whom he brings "justice."

No, no I'm not. The vast, vast majority of those killed needed killing. We've killed fewer noncombatants in these two engagements (Iraq and Afghanistan) than in any wars in human history -- partly because of precision munitions, and partly because of rules of engagement written by people who place more value on the lives of those noncombatants than they do the lives of our own military.

You think we've bought nothing with the lives and money we've spent in these wars? How many of the enemy do you suppose we've killed?

But then, I suppose if we killed 10 million of them, and it cost us 12 cents and no casualties and zero dead noncombatants, you'd bemoan the tragic loss of life of those 10 million people.

Each of which wanted you dead and your children enslaved, because they're lunatic followers of the sort of maniacal religion that gives them moral justification to hang a 7-year-old boy.

But we mustn't hurt them; we should talk to them. And maybe we could make them like us.

Jesus Christ. What the fuck is the matter with you? Grow a pair of balls.

You seem to imagine an infinite horde, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of hate-fueled fanatical thugees pledged to Allah to kill infidels, to kill Americans. Most of those we've killed and are killing are just people like you and me...people trying to feed and raise their children, work, and improve their lives. Such multitudes of slavering Islamomaniacs as you describe are non-existent, a figment of your fear-filled mind, put there by lying weasels who will benefit by the hypnotized pavlov's response their war-mongering has instilled in you and your terrified ilk.

(What we are likely creating are shit-loads of pissed off people who have had their lands and their homes destroyed and loved ones maimed or killed by Americans, people who formerly probably admired America and our purported--as opposed to our true--values, yet who now see us as murdering dogs, who see us correctly as aggressors and invaders in their lands. You know, just the way you feel about those who came here and killed Americans. Those people are going to be just as hate-filled as you, just as eager--now--to see us have our asses handed to us, after the shit we've forced down their throats these last nine years.)

Ah, but there's no sense talking to you, Pasta, as you obviously live in an alternate reality to the one rational people reside in.